Basketball revenue lifts profile of all UD sports

Baseball team one of four to reach NCAA tourney in 2011-’12.

Mike Kelly, the former football coach at the University of Dayton, now works as a sports program administrator at the school, and one of his jobs is to raise funds for the athletic department.

That task has gotten a lot less difficult the last couple of years.

The UD baseball team is making its first NCAA tournament appearance today against Texas A&M in College Station, Texas, and it’s one of several sports at the school that has benefited from having more athletic-department dollars flowing its way.

The Flyers had four teams reach NCAA tourneys in 201112 — baseball, volleyball, women’s soccer and women’s basketball. No other school in the Atlantic 10 had more than two NCAA berths.

“The alums and people who care see what is happening and want to be a part of it,” Kelly said. “It’s like anything else, it’s easier to sell something when you’re successful.”

UD started the Arena Seating Program for men’s basketball in 1997, requiring fans to pay a fee for access to season tickets. The goal was to spread the additional revenue to other sports, most of which had been neglected, and the Flyers are seeing results.

The volleyball program made its first NCAA trip in 2003 and has gone to the tourney eight of the last nine years. The women’s basketball team had its breakthrough year in 2010 and has made three straight NCAA appearances.

Men’s basketball and men’s and women’s soccer have a combined 13 NCAA berths since the ASP was launched, while cross country and track have had 19 individual qualifiers for the NCAA nationals.

“I remember when I was coaching, people would ask, ‘What can I do?’ ” Kelly said. “I told them the best thing you can do is buy season tickets for men’s basketball. … If you want your money to be utilized in our sports, we all live off that. If we don’t have an Arena Seating Plan and sell out, all our programs suffer. Shoot, I don’t even have a job now if not for that.”

The ASP generates roughly $3 million for the athletic department, which is about 67 percent self-sustaining (the other 33 percent comes from university support). UD basketball had a $6.6 million surplus in 2010-11, which was funneled to other sports.

Baseball coach Tony Vittorio, who has led the Flyers to a pair of A-10 regular-season crowns in the last four years, has seen his scholarships increase from six when he was hired 13 years ago to nine this season, and it will be bumped to 10.5 next year. The NCAA maximum is 11.7.

“That’s been the positive thing about the University of Dayton,” Vittorio said. “We had six scholarships and were playing in a subpar facility when I started. But because of the UD athletic department, through a lot of people, it keeps getting better and better.

“It’s not like you’re keeping it here (holding it at a certain level) like a lot of schools would do — especially maybe in baseball in a cold-weather state. That hasn’t happened here. We’ve been raising the bar each year.”